Ex-minister calls for rail renationalisation

By David Graves

12:01AM GMT 01 Jan 2002

A FORMER Cabinet minister called for the renationalisation of the railways yesterday, as John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, acknowledged that he "took a gamble" that failed when he attempted to reform Railtrack five years ago.

Gavin Strang, who served under Mr Prescott as transport minister for a year after Labour's election success in 1997, said privatisation of the railways by the Tories had failed and was "continuing to fail".

He said: "It is all about priorities. If we attach a very high priority to getting the railways right then I think we take complete control, which I think means the Government takes ownership."

Mr Strang, who was a Cabinet minister until 1998, added: "The level of service and the lack of investment is such that we really should not persist with this fragmented arrangement.

"The correct position now is to take the railways back into public ownership. If the Government owns them, then it is able to give it the priority which it justifies. Remember railways are a very, very important mode of transport."

However, even before the 1997 election, Labour had considered the back-door renationalisation of the industry by using Whitehall grants to buy equity. The plans were never enacted when Labour came to power.

Mr Strang made his opinions known as Mr Prescott, who was in overall charge of transport policy after Labour won power, struggled to defend the Government's record on the railways.

As the rail industry ended a disastrous year with fresh warnings over sub-standard infrastructure, Mr Prescott accepted that he could have done more to improve services when Labour took office after the 1997 general election.

Mr Prescott, who was a vociferous critic of the Tory government's management of public transport and creation of Railtrack before Labour's election success, said in a radio interview that he could be "properly" criticised for his decisions.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Where you could have proper criticism of me, I took a gamble, I put it to the party conference that we would try to make Railtrack work.

"I brought in a new strategic rail authority and I gave power to the rail regulator to fine them, but Railtrack was so badly flawed, they couldn't implement [change] on the rails."

As Mr Prescott reiterated Tony Blair's call to make public transport one of the Government's main domestic priorities for the New Year, he accused the media of concentrating only on the problems of the railways, saying that more people were now travelling by train.

His claim was borne out by statistics collated by the Association of Train Operating Companies, which maintained that more than 81 million journeys were made in the four weeks to Dec 7, the highest since 1945.

Mr Prescott said the Government was now trying to put "massive" resources into the railways. However, he offered only luke-warm support for Stephen Byers, the Transport Secretary, over his decision to put Railtrack into administration.